Jimmie Lee Jackson

Case background and investigation

Jimmie Lee Jackson was born in Marion, Alabama, on December 16, 1938. According to the National Park Service and Stanford University's King Institute, he was a former soldier, a laborer who worked in logging and farming, a father, and the youngest deacon at his church. He became active in the local voting rights campaign after seeing his grandfather turned away when trying to register to vote.

On the night of February 18, 1965, demonstrators in Marion set out from Zion United Methodist Church toward the Perry County Jail to protest the arrest of civil rights worker James Orange. The National Park Service account states that the streetlights went dark and state troopers moved against the marchers. Jackson, his mother and other family members took shelter in Mack's Cafe, behind the church. According to the King Institute, Jackson was trying to protect his mother from being beaten when trooper James Bonard Fowler shot him in the abdomen. He was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, where he died on February 26, 1965.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Jackson's funeral on March 3. Historians and the National Park Service describe his death as the catalyst for the march from Selma toward Montgomery that began on March 7, 1965, the day known as Bloody Sunday. The marches built support for the Voting Rights Act, which became law later that year.

A grand jury declined to indict Fowler in 1965, and his name was not widely known for decades. In a 2005 interview with the Anniston Star he acknowledged firing the shots and said he had acted in self-defense, asserting that Jackson had tried to take his gun. Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson, who is not related to the victim, reopened the case, and a grand jury indicted Fowler on murder charges in May 2007.

On November 15, 2010, two weeks before his trial was due to begin, Fowler, then 77, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor second-degree manslaughter. According to the Associated Press report carried by WBUR, he was sentenced to six months in jail in Geneva County, followed by probation, and he apologized to Jackson's family in court while saying he had not intended to kill anyone. Jackson's daughter, Cordelia Billingsley, told reporters that the outcome could not bring real closure.

Fowler was released after about five months because of health problems, according to published accounts, and he died on July 5, 2015. The plea remains the only criminal conviction arising from Jackson's death, which came 45 years after the shooting.